Celeste: A new model for cataloging the universe

The roots of tradition run deep in astronomy. From Galileo and Copernicus to Hubble and Hawking, scientists and philosophers have been pondering the mysteries of the universe for centuries, scanning the sky with methods and models that, for the most part, haven't changed much until the last two decades.

Staff: Admin

Staff: Mentor

I was always wondering why a global database didn't exist.
Astronomers find so many "new" objects on older images - imagine a program that has access to all relevant images, how many objects and other interesting changes could it find?

"Ten to 15 years ago, you'd get an image of the sky and you didn't even know exactly where you were pointed on the sky. So the first thing you'd do is pull it up on the computer and click around on stars and try to identify them to figure out exactly where you were. And you would do that by hand for every single image."